Altair, Sequans drive TD-LTE in India, U.S.

SAN JOSE – Altair Semiconductor announced a low-cost TD-LTE chip set for India and chip designer Sequans Communications said it will work with service provider Clearwire to support its planned TD-LTE network. The efforts are incremental steps in a broad effort to establish technology and networks for the Time-Division version of the Long Term Evolution variety of 4G cellular networks.

Altair Semiconductor (Hod Hasharon, Israel) released Hornet, a TD-LTE chip set aimed for the Indian TD-LTE market. Production volumes of the chip set are expected “soon,” said an Altair spokesman. The company did not immediately provide details about the chip set.

Separately rival Sequans Communications (Paris) said it will support the planned TD-LTE network of Clearwire in the U.S., expected to be operational in 2013. The two companies will work together on performance testing and certification, standards development, and the creation of devices to support multi-band, multi-mode TD-LTE and Frequency Duplex LTE (FD-LTE).

Clearwire's network will use the 3GPP Band 41 specification over Clearwire's 160 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum in the U.S. It aims to serve both wholesale and retail customers. The two companies previously collaborated on Clearwire’s WiMax network.

"As one of the largest chip providers for a wide range of devices in the WiMAX ecosystem, Sequans has been a major enabler of our growth," said John Saw, Clearwire's chief technology officer, speaking in a press release.

Both Altair and Sequans TD-LTE chips are being used in commercial networks in Brazil and field trials in China. In addition, Altair chips have been used in field trials in Japan and India. For its part Sequans' TD-LTE chips also are used in commercial networks in Australia.

HiSilicon and Qualcomm announced at Mobile World Congress earlier this year they will ship chip sets that support both TD-LTE and FD-LTE. China led the development of the TD-LTE standard as an outgrowth of its 3G TD-SCDMA work. Carriers in Europe and the U.S. are mainly deploying FD-LTE.